LETTERS of October 6

Colombia ‘Election’ Scam Masks Gov’t Killings

Colombia just “elected” a new president, Juan Manuel Santos, who’s CEO of the newspaper “El Tiempo,” with the country’s largest circulation, spreading the official line of the government and the ruling class. Santos also owns 60% of the company that tallies the votes and computes statistics. He was also the Minister of Defense under Uribe, Colombia’s previous president.

Under his command the government picked up young men from poor areas, ”offered” them jobs, took them far from their homes, forced them to dress in military gear and then killed them. The government then claimed they had been guerrillas killed in fights with the army. This “proved” to the public that Uribe’s government was winning the battle against the guerillas.

In this latest “election,” by 2:00 PM on the second day of voting, the votes had already officially been counted. The winner was Uribe’s “student,” Santos. Although 57% of the electorate didn’t vote, Santos was said to have had the highest voting rate in history.

For vice-president they picked Angelino Garzon, an ex-union leader and “ex-militant” of the “communist” party. This was to clean up Uribe’s party’s image internationally. It’s been widely known that Uribe sponsored drug-trafficking and that his government assassinated more than 2,500 union leaders. Many more had to flee the country because their lives and their families were threatened. Uribe virtually destroyed the union movement.

So the ex-union leader is supposed to clean the government’s image, telling the world that what’s said about the government is untrue. But this character is a renegade from the working class, who sold us out for a plate of lentils (for nothing). He’s someone who, just like the President, has no conscience. After he was discredited by the union movement his only option was to serve the rulers. He’s a traitor to workers and is trying to demoralize the workers’ movement, feeding workers’ cynicism.       

Colombia is in a deep crisis. According to the country’s National Administrative Department of Statistics, the unemployment rate is 12% and the poverty rate 45%. Colombia also has nine U.S. military bases and gives the U.S. 82% of its mining agreements.

Now the ruling class wants to pretend to make war between Venezuela and Colombia to distract workers’ attention and use them as bait to fight for their imperialist interests. This is part of the inter-imperialist struggle to control areas with natural resources such as oil which are vital for capitalism.  

The rulers lie to the public shamelessly. The truth is that the majority of workers didn’t vote because they don’t believe in the candidates the wealthy select for election. Unfortunately they’re not organized and the movement is scattered.

But the working class has huge potential. That’s why we in PLP organize within the movement. We understand there are ups and downs. While the workers’ movement is in a lull internationally, the laws of dialectics teach us that nothing is forever. We have confidence and work patiently, but urgently. We know the workers will rise up to follow the red flag of communism and sweep away all the traitors and the bourgeoisie once and for all. We will build a communist system where the workers will be the ones to benefit.

A Convinced Comrade

D.C. Mayor’s Housing Edict: Homeless Need $50,000/Year!

Here’s a follow up to the land occupation protest in Washington, D.C. for affordable housing reported in CHALLENGE, 8/18/2010.

For six weeks, Parcel 42 remained occupied by a few students and homeless residents and was monitored by ONE DC, the community-based organization (CBO) that led the initial seizure. Discussions with city councilman Michael Brown were continuing but no concessions were forthcoming from the Mayor. There were no efforts by the city to evict the tent residents, most likely due to the upcoming primary election.

Thousands of passers-by saw the encampment during the heat of summer, observing this very visible protest against the Mayor’s policy of gentrification. Many learned how he manipulated statistics to back off his “commitment” to affordable housing by making the planned housing at Parcel 42 available only to those who make an annual income of $50,000 — a deliberately unaffordable price for displaced residents!

On August 29, ONE DC removed its tents and left its supplies for the homeless. The occupation by the community organization is over but some homeless residents remain.

The ability of a small CBO to sustain this encampment for weeks was limited by lack of support from other organizations and lack of planning for the possibility that the government would not immediately evict them. Many students and workers were on vacation in the summer and the heat was ferocious, so there was little base to expand the project.

In this sense, the project was not successful, but the visible protest and experience gives us new ideas about what it takes to build a movement. It also enables us to consider a longer, better-organized mass campaign around housing issues.

The Party members involved have talked to some of the organizers about our ideas. We’ve gotten a good response and had good discussions with our friends about the event. The mass work on housing and HIV/AIDS will intensify with the new academic year as public health workers and students continue to build mass actions while PL’ers keep the struggle for communism in the forefront of organizing efforts.

D.C. Red

Founder’s Greeting to PL Convention

(Here is a statement from a Chicago comrade, one of the founders of the Party, who asked it be conveyed to our recent convention. He is in declining health, but still committed to our goals and to the organization.)

“We must... fight against this racist system and build the organization. The only way to have any kind of future is to make this fight primary, because we cannot do what we need to do without fighting racism with working-class, multiracial unity and international solidarity. I cannot do much these days, and I wish I could do more. I did lead a struggle to keep a black worker on his job and led a struggle to allow some of the residents of my retirement area to have the right to sing songs in the common area. So, even if I can’t be with you, I send you greetings in the name of all the comrades from the old movement who did many great things, even though they did not lead to the revolution we dreamed of. Fight for communism, power to the workers!

Capitalism’s Horrors and Class Consciousness Spark for Red Fires

Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of capitalism more than the Chinese boss who, knowing the terrible working conditions in his factory, is making all new hires swear that they will not commit suicide (CHALLENGE 8/18)! For the vast majority of workers around the world, starvation wages are only part of capitalism’s horrors. Oppressive speed-ups, racist and sexist exploitation, and unhealthy heat and air quality are the norm, not the exception, under capitalism.

The vast majority of workers in factories and fields are forced to endure long days of monotonous and repetitive tasks. Workers are treated as replaceable machines with little connection to the final product that they have labored to build and that most can’t afford to buy. Teenage women with nimble fingers are forced to work 12-hour days on factory assembly lines for minimum wages until the grueling wear and tear of their labor weakens their hands and profit-hungry bosses discard them into a growing army of unemployed workers.

Even workers who have jobs that look as if they should be satisfying (like teachers) find their work frustrating and demoralizing. Boards of Education enforce “teaching to the test” — emphasizing rote memorization instead of the creative thinking that our working-class children need to learn to overthrow capitalism. The racist, sexist and nationalist content of public “education” around the world is an insult to the creativity of teachers and students alike.

The process of work that should be a source of pride and accomplishment is turned by capitalism into its opposite — dehumanizing drudgery where the boss steals the lion’s share of what is produced by pocketing the profits off our labor (what Marx identified as surplus value).

Communist organization of production, though, can turn this all around. Workers in Shanghai, China, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, seized their factories in an attempt to reverse the capitalist road that Chinese leaders had taken and move toward a communist system of production. Workers took time every day to meet to discuss developments around the world and to reorganize work in the factory to gain greater satisfaction and control over their daily labor.

Building communist consciousness and understanding of what is necessary to create an egalitarian society and communist forms of production became the goal, instead of maximizing production and profits. This example of workers uniting together in the struggle for communism is a beacon of light for the world’s workers and a lesson for what we have to do today.

Worker suicides are a great tragedy for our class, but they should only strengthen our resolve to struggle against capitalist oppression. We can begin to overcome our alienation by uniting with even just one other worker in a fight against the oppression that we all face. A spark of mutual support and collective action can, as Chinese communists were fond of saying, start a prairie fire. We have a world to win where capitalist alienation will be only a bad memory. Join us in struggle for a communist future.

NYC RED